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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

White Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I enjoyed two of the 24 Hours of "A Christmas Story" on TBS with friends, and ate two wonderful turkey dinners. When I say wonderful turkey dinners, I mean I pretty much just ate turkey and cranberry sauce (and some cocktail shrimp and cheesecake.) I don't mean to disparage my hosts' cooking, but I adore turkey and tend to think of potatoes and stuffing as lesser filler. And when there's tons of it available, I wait until the line has moved through and people are focused on their own food; then I protein-load with a big pile of white meat. I love the holidays.

I went for a short ride before work yesterday. I didn't really enjoy it. To be honest, I haven't enjoyed biking much for a couple of weeks now. I usually look back on it fondly after the ride, when the blood is starting to return to my extremities, bringing with it that oh-so-satisfying rush of endorphins. But the conditions have made it so hard to motivate. Hard. So today, with Geoff in New York and no Santa visit to speak of, with slush streams falling from the sky and full day of work ahead of me, I gave myself something I really wanted for Christmas - I set up my bike trainer in the living room. I spent the better part of the morning pounding away at it and watching "The Devil Wears Prada." That movie is 100 minutes long. With the resistance set to 7, that's a decent workout. I had to spread newspapers underneath the bike to soak up all the sweat. It felt great. No regrets.

I don't really plan to keep this up. For starters, Blockbuster charges $4 per video. Plus, I need to acclimate myself to the cold and the pain - that's almost more important to preparing for the kind of races I do than being physically fit - and I thrive on the daily mini-adventures anyway. But, deep down, all I want to do is rage, rage against the dying of the light. And if the sun doesn't show up soon, I'm not sure what I might do.

Love that movie. Down here, though, we haven't reached but a day or two when shorts wouldn't have been the prevalent wear in Fairbanks. How am I going to get The Boy to stick his tongue to freezing metal????

I am glad you shared in the joy of a christmas story on TBS. I too enjoyed that 24hr special (didn't even have to barrow it from the rents) Hey, if you like movies, blockbuster online has a nice special for $10 a month you get a movie, keep it as short or as long as you want, and then when you send it back you get another. I did it for a few months and watched all the scrub DVD's...hilarious. But I gave it up in hopes of getting TIVO. Anyway, Love you. Lisa

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